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“Where I was from before,” Loki agrees. “Now that you’ve accepted me as yours, I thought… it’s finer than this shack. I have many rooms. We would have neighbors.” He pauses. From the way his eyes glimmer, I’m betting he’s using my essence to see what would sway me. “It has a tub with warm water.”
You know, one of these days I’m going to have to figure out how to tap into his essence and find out what led him to exile himself to the dark shadows with nothing but beasts for company. I’m not a pro at using his essence yet, so he’s doing better than me, but it doesn’t matter.
I’ll go where he goes, and if I have to spend an eternity to learn what makes Loki tick, I will.
Grinning at him, I lay my hand on his chest. “Put like that, how can a girl refuse?”
Honestly? He had me at tub.
CHAPTER14
NUIT
KENNEDY
My mate wastes no time. After extinguishing the light spells in both rooms, he makes sure that I have Freya snuggled close before he lifts me up. At my urging, he grabs theGrimoire du Sombra, too, tucking it under his arm.
I leave my old dress behind.
Loki doesn’t put me down again until we break free of the shadows. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a very far walk. A little frightening since I kept expecting another one of those monster beasts to jump out at us, but as though the predators in the dark knew not to mess with Loki, they watched us with their bright white eyes, but kept their distance.
Walking out of the shadows is like willingly walking into an oven. That’s what the blast of dry air slamming into my face feels like.
The ground is weird, too. It was firmer in the dark. Out here, it’s thick with a little give to it. Red flecked with grey, black and white, it looks like someone took an ashtray and sprinkled it over a pile of paprika.
The sky is red, too. So is the moon hanging over my head.
It was black in the shadows, I think, before I have to say something about the heat.
“Holy shit, it’s hot.” I fan my face. “Were we in a refrigerator back there?”
Because, seriously, it’s like a thirty-degree difference between the shadows and the heat—and that’s with our temperatures matching now that we’re full bonded mates.
“Refrigerator?” Loki echoes.
Right. I forgot. Not every word in English has a direct translation. They obviously don’t have anything like a fridge here.
Considering it’s hot as hell on the other side of the shadows, that makes sense. While there’s magic in Sombra—the same kind of magic that makes it so Loki can conjure those light orbs of his—there’s no electricity. Can you imagine if there was? How much energy would it take to keep anything cool in this hell world?
“Never mind.”
I wave my hand and reach up to make sure that Freya is doing okay. With her shadowy fur, I don’t know how she’ll react to the heat, but considering she’s just chittering away, it doesn’t seem to bother her. She’s probably just glad to be out of the shadows without an arkoda chasing her into a tree.
Glancing further, I see a whole bunch of structures spread out in the distance. They look more like small ranch houses, squat and flat but wide, and all of them are dark so it’s hard to pick up too many details.
Following the direction of my stare, Loki says, “That is Nuit. Are you ready, my mate?”
Ready as I’m ever going to be. “Sure. Might sweat to death, but I’ll be fine.”
“To death?” murmurs my mate. “You are immortal now.
“Just an expression, Loki.” I pat him on the arm. “Just an expression.”
* * *
There’s no refrigerators.No phones, either. No way to give the leader of the village I’m dragging my feet through the ash toward any heads up that we’re on the way.
And yet, just as we cross from the open space to the first line of demon houses, we’re met by two villagers.
